My little blog about growing little people, and a little food, in the city.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

"Back to School" Anxiety

Not sure if it's the slight cooling of the days, the garden harvest, the back to school sales everywhere or the fact that Henry returns to his enrichment program in a couple of weeks, but I'm starting to feel some anxiety about this coming homeschool year.

I'm sure we'll find our rhythm. I know I will continue to see my children learn and grow. But I am at a point, once again, where I feel like I should be taking a more active role in the process. Part of this is because I want to. But then I start thinking of all of the cool things we could be doing and know that we can never do it all and then feel overwhelmed by everything and then I'm frozen by my anxiety and I just do nothing. It's such a lovely cycle.

So I've worked out a weekly routine. And I've set an intention of doing math and phonics every day. I am really resisting using the curriculum we have for these areas of learning, but I'm going to try to do it consistently for a month and see how it works for us. I resist "drill and kill" or any sort of scope and sequence type learning, but then I use the analogy of a musician practicing scales and it starts to make more sense to me. I think Henry needs the repeated practice provided by things like phonics flash cards to build his fluency for reading. Or maybe he doesn't, but I'll admit I'm uneasy waiting until he's 10 to see if he just becomes a good reader on his own.

Well, I allotted the kids one episode of Hello Kitty and that is over, so my time for thinking and writing is also over.

What anxieties, if any, are you facing as the rest of the world heads back to school?

4 comments:

We started last week and it was tough. But then I discovered an online homeschool scheduler and that has done wonders for my peace of mind. I have a set routine which is more like a written goal and it just feels less overwhelming to me. I use skedtrack because it is free but lots of people like a paid site whose name escapes me. At the end of the day I mark what was accomplished. Any planned activities that I didn't get to will show up on the next scheduled day for that activity. After the work of the initial setup it has been super easy and the best thing I've done for homeschooling ever.

I wanted to add that the reason I initially did this was to coordinate book checkouts for several subjects. I could see when we would need a book and also write down that I was going to use the book for that reason. We;re doing history, science, and FIAR and my mind couldn't keep track of it all. Now I have books on hold to come to me the end of September when I am scheduled to need them. I can also write a note about which supplies I might need for a project so I'm not caught off guard.

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About Me

Welcome to my little house in the city! I have dedicated my life to the education of young children. In it's current form, that means I am a homeschooling mother. In past iterations it has meant working as an early childhood special ed teacher, a Montessori teaching assistant, and an analyst of early childhood education policy.
My current job is by far my favorite, and I often joke that I got a master's degree (in early childhood education) to be a mom. I have a passion for sharing my knowledge and experience with other parents and have learned that it's a heck of a lot easier to tell others how to parent than to parent my own children. So I blog.